Could the answer to spyware and adware be anti-trespassing law? That would be cool, but I wonder if it would really work? We haven't managed to wipe out graffitti yet, and there's not even a profit motive....
Speaking of profit motives, companies are trying to make bloggers and other websites pay to be part of the "fast" internet, but so far it's still against the law.
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These rightwingers like to play at "Originalism" and rely on early American and English Common Law (at least, so they pretend.)
Quoting Lord Camden is Justice Bradley in the 1886 decision of Boyd v US
"By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. No man can set his foot upon my ground without my license, but he is liable to an action, though the damage be nothing, which is proved by every declaration in trespass where the defendant is called upon to answer for bruising the grass and even treading upon the soil. If he admits the fact, he is bound to show, by way of justification, that some positive law has justified or excused him."
Actually, Boss Originalist Himself, Scalia, recently said that even English Common Law was something to be taken into account only by necessity (it being the only law in existence at the time of the Constitution's writing) but carefully, that it never override Constitutional provisions or current understandings of US law. It's foreign, you know....
So we'd be better off looking to the letter of the law here, though it would be nice if the principle applied. It's kind of the same principle that environmental legislation rests on....
Heck, graffiti managed to get itself classified as an art form, so in a sense it's transcended All That.
Perish that thought with regard to spyware and adware, please ... just forget I even mentioned it. Shudder.
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